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Monday, 19 February 2018

I needed a new author photo, so Dave from our Bush Fire Brigade came around to take some for me. I can't thank him enough! He made me look so good. :D At 52, I reckon it will be the last time I ever get away with having photos taken that make me look so very young, and yet also wise and authory at the same time!

What do you think?

Thoughtful?

A bit cheekier?

Colour?

And he also got some lovely ones of me with my dogs.

I like the effect of this one. Makes it look like my dogs are demon familiars! Might have to use it for inside the second Satan Smith book...

Dave takes real estate photos for a living, but I think he should branch out into portraiture! Thanks again, Dave. You truly epitomise what it should mean to be part of a Firey family!

Wednesday, 14 February 2018

I have no idea. i never have enough time for all the fun stuff I want to do.

My latest book has gone out to first readers. Yay! It's an exciting time waiting to hear what they think! Now it is time to play with cover ideas. How do you like my silly attempt in Gimp just to try out my idea?

LOL, I wonder why I bother to do real artwork? Not! :D

The two lyres are slowly progressing. Using the router is a tad terrifying, but so far so good, no holes in places there shouldn't be.

This is the deeper experimental lyre. It already has a name. It is called Torc, which is Irish and Old Irish for Boar. The name came about due to something I experienced in a meditation. Boar has long been one of my guides. I even bear his mark after a farm accident!

Mowing has been happening. How scruffy can I look? I'm told I should stop wearing the clothes that are now too big for me, but I say waste not want not! (Plus I love some of these t-shirts too much to let them go!)

We've created another home sausage-making addict in Thor, our Firey friend. He came for a guitar lesson and went away a sausage fanatic, already researching new recipes to try!

Yes it looks rude. It always looks rude. We've made a lot of sausages by now and we aren't over it yet. Amusement abounds. :D

Yep ok, I can see that t-shirt may be a little bit too big now.

We took the dogs to the river on Monday morning early. They loved it.

Aren't these silhouettes and the blue lovely together?

The chickies are still growing and having fun. I'll get some new pics of them for you soon.

Friday, 9 February 2018

I know, I've having a blogging break and i never warned you that I would. Sorry about that! It just seems like I've been so busy and every time I sit down at the computer I want to edit my latest book instead of blogging. I guess that's a good thing!

One reason we've been so busy is the new verandah.

How it was:

With the canopy off and a weatherboard removed ready for rafters.

Framing up.

Getting there!

Corro going on!

Done!

It was all enlivened by having the baby chickens underfoot. They are getting bigger all the time and are very friendly. Here is little Morgana trying out the big girls' sleeping perch.

They aren't trying to sleep up there yet. They still put themselves to bed in the nest down below, the little cuties, despite the fact that mama Spotty is back with the other hens and being just as mean to them as the other girls. I thought having them grow up a part of the flock would make the join easier but apparently not. Red chooks just gotta hate!

And here is the Virginia Creeper growing out of the old chimney for the braemar that used to be down below. It goes down under the eave rather than into the cottage so we've never bothered to cover or remove it.

And here is one of the grand old Marris up at the block. What a canopy!

Monday, 5 February 2018

I know how to hand cut and braid
kangaroo hide because I was lucky enough to learn it at the feet of a
94 year old saddler who was from three generations of saddlers. He
was a lovely old man and used to tell me stories of his life as we
sat outside in the shade of a beautiful tree and did our work. He
also had a tame magpie who would bite my ankles till I did Ttouch on
her until she was so relaxed she had crept up into my lap and fallen
asleep, and she decided I was ok after that.

The best moment of my horse-riding life
might have been this time, I was maybe 17, and I was galloping a
palouse pony down this sandy hill bareback and he tripped and
staggered forward for a few hair-raising strides and tipped me off,
but I ran alongside with my hands stilled gripped in his mane and
vaulted back on at full gallop. No-one saw it, sadly!

I have a Second Dan Black Belt in
Taekwondo, that I earned after 7 years of training and grading. I was
39 when I passed that grading. I started by going to a self defense
course and found I was good at it and loved it and it went from
there. Andrew, my hubby, who was already a Black Belt in Karate came
along too and we trained together at home and passed all our gradings
the same day apart from our Black Belts, where I pulled a muscle in
my calf halfway and had to redo that grading a few weeks later.

From the ages of 10 to 30 I had a
stepdad who was not only a sociopath but had munchausen's and
munchausen's by proxy, as well. It has shaped me in very odd ways,
some good, some not so good. I am proud, though, that I became ever
more honest rather than follow his example. It made me ever more
determined to be a good and honorable person. My mum and sister and I
survived him and stayed together. It was quite an accomplishment.
He is still alive somewhere and I will be really happy the day I know
he is dead because no-one else will need to suffer from him or be
changed irrevocably by him ever again.

When I was a teen I got a ten week old
puppy called Keech who was a Kelpie (local herding dog) crossed with
who knows what. She was so beautiful, with her broad head, black and
tan coat, gold-flecked brown eyes, and tall pointed ears. She was my
heart, my sister, mother and friend, for fifteen years. She had love
for everyone and yet was always dignified. She taught me so much,
and still comes to me as my Guide in my Druid journey meditations.
All my dogs since have been like my children, but Keech was/is a soul
mate.

The very first ever novel I wrote was
in the evenings and weekends when I was doing my teaching degree. It
was a swashbuckling sword and sorcery with a very feisty female lead
character, and it was funny and quite rude too! It was a great
relief after my days of trying to be something I was not. I banged
it out on the little orange typewriter my grandmother gave me many
years before when I said I'd decided to be a writer. I'd get quite
involved. I remember one night I was madly typing some exciting
fight scene and a piece of wood fell out of the fire behind me and I
nearly hit the roof, I jumped so hard!

When I was in my twenties and early
thirties I never cut my hair, so that it grew till it was to the
backs of my knees. I nearly always wore it in two long braids like a
viking, but when I took it out it was like a river of gold and
bronze. I felt like my hair was my strength like Sampson did. Maybe
it was. It was only after I cut it that I got sick! It's growing
again now and I keep saying I will only grow it to my shoulderblades,
then trim it, but I haven't for a long time and it is on the way down
my back again...

Tuesday, 30 January 2018

She decided the other day that it was weaning day, so every time one tried to poke their beak into the hole she was scratching, they'd get it pecked. Poor kids, they had no idea what was happening and it took them a little while to twig that the hand-outs were over. I can't blame her though. She is looking worn out. Five at once is a lot of twerping, scurrying, tussling teenagers to keep track of.

Yesterday we left the dogs and chooks to mum's care and did a 7 hour stint at the control point for a fire in a nearby shire. It was my first turnout for my coms brigade, even though we did the shift for another comms unit that was running low on numbers. It was interesting, and much much cleaner than being actually on the fireground! I really felt for the sooty, tired people who came in to pull their t-cards to go home, even while I wished I was out there too. Still, there will be other days, of both sorts hopefully.

Kerrie is a whizz at the boards and T-cards and taught me a lot! I always like to see her adorable face, and Tom's, when I show up somewhere. Volunteers really are generally lovely people!

We came home mentally tired but happy from a job well done and, since it was out of our area, meeting and chatting to many new people was the icing on the cake.

My sister, Jen, has started Fionn back in work in the last two weeks. It is so lovely to see him back under saddle after his very bad leg injury that might have ended not only his soundness but his life. I never did show you the photos of that first day, but I assure it was very nasty. It has been 5 months of dedication from Jen to get him healed. It is equally lovely to see Jen healed enough to be out aboard Snow, her new boy, bush-riding with Fionn carrying her friend Fiona for his fifth ride. My brave sis! I'm not sure I'd have got back on any horse after that terrifying fall, but here she is, and smiling too!